Tax practitioner obligations

Tax practitioner obligations

Members who are tax practitioners must ensure that the personal details on their SAICA profiles are up to date (this may be updated via the SAICA Member Portal) and that they are subscribed to either the Standards and Legislation newsletter or Integritax newsletters on the Subscriptions page of the SAICA website. Please email saica@saica.co.za or log in to the SAICA Member Portal to log a case (query) for assistance with the subscription process, if necessary.

Tax Practitioners must submit the tax practitioner annual declaration on the SAICA Member Portal to report on compliance to CPD, SAICA’s code of ethics and criminal convictions in respect of the offences described in section 240(3) of the Tax Administration Act.

If you registered for the first time as a CA(SA), AGA or AT(SA) in the current calendar year, you must still submit an annual declaration and keep your own record of your CPD activities undertaken which will need to be presented if you are selected for monitoring.

Members over the age of 65 also need to adhere to these requirements if they are tax practitioners.

CPD hours for tax practitioners

Tax practitioner members must ensure that they fully understand the CPD obligations that need to be complied with by 31 December every year and that they are on track to attain this. Please note that no extensions to comply will be granted. If you find that your CPD hours are lacking, please institute interventions immediately to ensure that you are compliant by 31 December every year.

Tax practitioners must meet the minimum of 18 verifiable CPD hours annually, consisting of the following:

• 10 tax hours;
• 2 ethics hours; and
• 6 hours relating to the service provided by the individual – e.g. audit, financial reporting etc. If the individual provides only tax services, then presumably additional tax CPE hours will fulfill this requirement.

Note that, if you only registered as a tax practitioner during the course of the current year, your CPD requirement will be apportioned based on the number of months during the year for which you were registered. If you are applying the apportionment, please also submit the SARS letter that you should have received as proof of your registration as a tax practitioner as evidence of the date of your registration.

As imposed by SARS, SAICA is required to verify at least 20% of its tax practitioner members’ CPD records annually. Tax practitioners must retain their CPD records for a period of 5 years.

Note that if you are selected for monitoring, you will be required to log in to the SAICA Member Portal and upload the records of CPD as well as related evidence. The requirement to comply with CPD applies from the date of registration as a tax practitioner.

A list of CPD activities may be captured in a PDF, Word, PowerPoint or Excel spreadsheet format.

Evidence of verifiable CPD as reflected on your CPD activity list could include certificates of courses attended, attendance registers verified by third parties, letters or emails from third parties confirming the CPD learning activity and your participation in such activity. Where the CPD training was provided by SAICA or through the SAICA Learner Management System, SAICA will verify hours internally. If you choose to use the Learner Management System option, please ensure that the CPD quizzes are completed to claim verifiable hours.

Tax Compliance Status

Individuals applying to be registered as tax practitioners for the first time will be required to submit as part of their application a valid tax compliance status letter (PIN) or a screenshot of your personal Compliance Dashboard, which is available on your eFiling profile.

As part of the annual membership renewal, SAICA verifies the tax compliance status of tax practitioners once a year.

Proof of criminal status
Individuals applying to be registered as tax practitioners for the first time will be required to submit as part of their application, an independently verified criminal certificate to SAICA, e.g. provide a police clearance certificate from the South African Police Services (SAPS). If members prefer, they may use the service of a reputable criminal record checking company as an alternative, many of which are available throughout South Africa.

Once the individual has been registered as a tax practitioner, a sworn affidavit must be submitted to SAICA once every five years indicating that the criminal free status remains unchanged.

Visit the SARS tax practitioner webpage.